Would night weaning help your breastfed baby sleep better?
Are you in a sleep crisis?
Weaning from the breast doesn't help babies sleep better. The research shows that breastfeeding mothers have as much or more sleep than parents who need to use formula. You can find out more here.
Breastfeeding women find nights are by far easiest when they breastfeed their baby back to sleep. But this only works if all underlying breastfeeding or body clock problems have been dealt with, your baby isn't waking excessively, and you are falling back to sleep quickly in the night.
Are you in a sleep crisis and wanting to wean, perhaps by having another loving adult take over in the night, because
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The nights are a constant sleep battle, as you try to space out breastfeeds? You can find out more here.
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You're feeling miserable with severe exhaustion and sleep deprivation? You can find out more here
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You're lying awake in the night when your baby sleeps? You can find out more here.
It can be helpful to know that
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Breastfeeding women (who feed each time baby wakes) sleep as much as or more than formula-feeding parents
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Excessive night waking is different to biologically normal night waking. A pattern of excessive night waking is usually caused by disruptions to your baby's circadian or body clock settings. It's not caused by the breastfeeding (once you're sure your baby is getting enough milk)
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Your baby isn't waking excessively in the night because you breastfeed her frequently and flexibly. But she has learnt that when she wakes, the most lovely way to go back to sleep is with the breast. This is not a bad habit - it's a gift you've given her!
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If your baby is waking excessively, a reset of your baby's body clock is required. If you work through The Possums Sleep Program, I would expect your baby to return to developmentally normal, more manageable night waking within a couple of weeks.
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Instead of receiving help for the true underlying problem with your baby's body clock settings, you might receive a lot of conflicting advice when your breastfeeding baby wakes excessively at nights. You can find out more here.
Women often feel sad if they've weaned their baby from the breast before they were ready, then discover, once their baby's waking returns to normal amounts, that they've lost their best tool for getting everyone back to sleep quickly in the night - and that weaning from the breast wasn't necessary to improve the nights!
Only you know when it's time to wean your little one
There is no right or wrong time to wean, only the time that works for you as a breastfeeding woman, whether you breastfeed for four days or four years. As women, we live complex 21st century lives, managing multiple demands and roles. Only you know what's right or possible for you and your baby. Women should never be judged for the decisions they make about this.
When I see a breastfeeding woman in the clinic who has questions about weaning, my role is to provide accurate science-based information and to empower her own decision-making, wherever she is at.
From an evolutionary perspective, and still in many families and cultures today, babies and toddlers have suckled from their mother's breast in the night to dial back down into sleep until they were at least two years old, often up until three years of age or older. Breastfeeding continues to be protective throughout toddlerhood, and remains a source of closeness and enjoyment for many mother-child pairs into the preschool years. But women already know the benefits of breast milk for their children's gut, metabolic and immune systems. In the NDC or Possums programs, we aim to focus on each family's values, and the growing of joy, however this looks for them.
Breastfeeding baby back to sleep makes nights easiest in the first year of life
Sometimes you'll hear that babies don't need milk in the night after six months of age. This advice comes from beliefs which have been proven wrong in the research. It's not true that weaning from either the breast or the bottle at nights in the first year of life
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Helps babies sleep better
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Helps you get more sleep.
Not offering milk in the night when your baby is in the first year of life can make nights much harder than they need to be.
Milk is just one part of a complex package. Milk comes bundled up with rich sensory motor nourishment, both contact with a parent's body, and the soothing of sucking movements of that little mouth. In the night, it doesn't help to try to separate out when a baby is hungry for milk from when a baby is hungry for the wonderful sensory motor package (you) that the milk comes with.
If you are weaning your baby from the breast in the night, and your baby is still in the first year of life, you might change over to bottles of formula, so that the nights continue to be as easy and as dialled down as possible. Then when your little one is more developmentally mature, and you think she is better able to learn something new in then night, you'll wean her from the bottle.
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You can find out about when it might be time to stop the bottle in the night here.
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You can also find out about weaning a toddler from the breast here.
Busting some common myths about breastfeeding and night-time baby sleep
Here I look at four common myths about weaning from the breast and night-time sleep, alongside some evidence-based information. Hopefully this helps you decide what’s right in your own unique context, for you and for your precious baby!
| Myth # | The breastfeeding and night-time baby sleep myth | The evidence |
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| 1 | Your baby will sleep for longer blocks of time without needing your attention if you wean at nights. | Night weaning does not decrease the frequency of night waking. You could wean your baby at night, then find your baby wakes just as often – but you’ve lost your best tool for getting your baby back to sleep easily and quickly! |
| 2 | Breastfed babies wake more than formula fed babies, so weaning from the breast will help baby sleep better. | Breastfeeding women get at least as much sleep as parents who are feeding baby with formula. |
| 3 | Your baby wakes a lot at night because she has developed the bad habit of expecting the breast every time she surfaces from quiet sleep into active sleep, at the end of a sleep cycle. The habit of expecting the breast makes babies wake a lot in the night. | Whilst your baby has learnt that the loveliest way to get back to sleep in the night is snuggled up with a breastfeed, that is not a bad habit but a gift you’ve given your baby. Your baby has developed the good habit of expecting the world around her to respond with love and generosity, which builds her capacity to form trusting relationships life-long. Usually, babies wake excessively at night due to disrupted body clock settings. You can find out about your breastfeeding newborn and excessive night waking here. |
| 4 | If you want to wean in the night, you also have to wean during the day and evenings, because otherwise your baby will still expect to breastfeed in the night. | As much breast milk as possible is good for babies. Babies are quick learners. If a mother of a baby in the second half of his first year of life decides she needs to stop breastfeeding during the Big Sleep at night, offering bottles of formula, she can continue to breastfeed during the day and at bed-time. She is teaching her little one that when it's night, he can no longer breastfeed, but when there is sunlight, he can. |
Selected references
Veile A, Miller V. Duration of breast feeding in ancestral environments. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_818: Springer, Cham.; 2021.
Recommended resources
Breastfeeding your baby to sleep doesn't cause bad habits
How to do baby sleep when you're ready to wean from the breast